Wednesday, December 5, 2007

School admissions and the total chaos there of

I was out on the roads yesterday most of the morning doing rounds of various schools for Betu's Pre-Primary (a new word for what was earlier called as Kindergarten of KG in short) admissions. Out of5 schools I went to, only 2 were going to open out forms for KG admissions. The rest are not going to have any this year. Reason? They are already all full with no vacancies.

I really wonder what was the objective behind this Ganguly committee being set up. Was it to smooth things out or to create even more chaos? Whatever the aim was but the way they have worked and made rules and changed them and changed them again have done nothing but created utter confusion.

Last year the rule was min age of 3.5 yrs by March 2007 to get admissions in the nursery for the session of 2007-2008. Fine. Anirudh didn't fit because he was going to turn 3 in March end.

2 weeks ago they have suddenly change back the age to 3 yrs by March end to be eligible for Nursery admissions and 4yrs for pre-primary. So this means he needs to go to KG now. But how is the question when all the schools say they have no vacancies because all the nursery students are getting promoted to KG.

So to summarize if he doesn't get through in KG he will have to take admission in Nursery and be one year older to the other kids in the class. I wonder what effect that will have on his psyche and on younger kids too. Either he will be frustrated since the mental level of younger kids will not match up to him. One year is a big difference at the age he is in. Or the other thing that might happen is that he will bully around the younger kids which he did in his current school till he was promoted to a higher class. Neither of which is something I want to happen.

And today TOI-New Delhi edition echoed my feelings exactly. The turmoil, the confusion that we have been going through.

Its just a wait and watch and then act game for us. All the schools are coming out with forms on Dec 15 so until then we can do nothing but just sit around anxiously for the date.

6 comments:

sounds crazy. hang in there and i don't think being with kids younger than him will affect betu too much, i don't think children understand a gap of a year as too much or too little.he'll do fine. hang tight. another 10 days to go.

Sounds very chaotic. Don' woory if he has to be in a class with young kids. I agree with mona that it will not affect him that much. My brother was the one of the oldest kids in his class because of his birthdate and he did just fine.

I second Mona and Naina here ..I would rather that my child is the eldest than the youngest in a class for exactly the same reason that u mention here ..so much development takes place in one year in terms of even motor skills, etc. Curious as to which class is Anirudh finally going to this year?